Читать книгу Tales of Laughter - Группа авторов - Страница 23

Table of Contents

A countryman once drove his plow with a pair of oxen, and when he came about the middle of his fields the horns of his two beasts began to grow, and grow, till they were so high that when he went home he could not get them into the stable-door. By good luck just then a Butcher passed by, to whom he gave up his beasts, and struck a bargain, that he should take to the Butcher a measure-full of turnip-seed, for every grain of which the Butcher should give him a Brabant dollar. That is what you may call a good bargain! The Countryman went home, and came again, carrying on his back a measure of seed, out of which he dropped one grain on the way. The Butcher, however, reckoned out for every seed a Brabant dollar; and had not the Countryman lost one he would have received a dollar more. Meanwhile the seed which he dropped on the road had grown up to a fine tree, reaching into the clouds. So the Countryman thought to himself he might as well see what the people in the clouds were about. Up he climbed, and at the top he found a field with some people thrashing oats; but while he was looking at them he felt the tree shake beneath him, and, peeping downward, he perceived that some one was on the point of chopping down the tree at the roots. “If I am thrown down,” said the Countryman to himself, “I shall have a bad fall;” and, quite bewildered, he could think of nothing else to save himself than to make a rope with the oat straw, which lay about in heaps. He then seized hold of a hatchet and flail which were near him, and let himself down by his straw rope. He fell into a deep, deep hole in the earth, and found it very lucky that he had brought the hatchet with him; for with it he cut steps, and so mounted again into the broad daylight, bringing with him the flail for a sign of the truth of his tale, which nobody, on that account, was able to doubt!

There is a wonderful adventure!!!